Democrat frontrunners Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg faced attacks last night at their party’s Nevada debate, an event that, whether or not it had a winner, surely presented six losers.
With Bernie and Bloomie having appeared to separate themselves from the field — they finished one and two in a recent poll, with Sanders leading the ex-NYC mayor by 12 points — the four other candidates knew they had to draw some blood.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), positioned right next to Bloomberg and falling behind him in the polls, was especially aggressive. “She sought to undermine him with core Democratic voters who are uncomfortable with his vast wealth, his offensive remarks about policing of minorities and demeaning comments about women, including those who worked at his company,” reported the AP. “Warren labeled Bloomberg ‘a billionaire who calls people fat broads and horse-faced lesbians.’”
Ex-South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-Ind.) attacked both radically socialist Sanders and billionaire Bloomberg, who has captured top-contender status by carpet bombing the airwaves with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign ads. Claiming neither man could defeat President Trump, a priority among Democrats, Buttigieg said that primary voters don’t want a choice between “one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out.”
Bloomberg, who has been taking support from the other Democrats who pretend to be moderate, notably ex-vice president Joe Biden, was the main focus of attack. Criticizing his notorious (in Democrat circles) stop-and-frisk program, for instance, Biden said it resulted in “throwing five million black men up against the wall.”
As for Bloomberg, his best line of the night came at Sanders’s expense. “I don’t think there’s any chance of the senator beating Donald Trump,” the billionaire stated. “The best known socialist in the country happens to be a millionaire with three houses!”
In summary, Sanders was attacked for being a purist ideologue lacking widespread appeal, while Bloomberg was scored for being a morally corrupt, insensitive Daddy Warbucks oligarch unconcerned with civil rights. Below is a video presenting a synopsis of the attacks on both frontrunners.
The question is: Will any of this alter the race’s trajectory? Unlike the lack of viewership characterizing recent Democrat debates, Wednesday’s Las Vegas event “set a ratings record for NBC,” with almost 20 million watching on that network and MSNBC, “the biggest audience ever to watch a Democratic debate,” according to Forbes.
Yet no one really landed a death blow or truly distinguished himself. While Warren was the most spirited with repeated attacks on Bloomberg, the bloom has long been off her. The senator’s continual lying and hollow and callow proposals (having a nine-year-old “trans” kid vet a cabinet pick) have painted her as juvenile, unserious, and intellectually lacking.
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who’d gained support after the last Democrat debate, “seemed too hokey and too forced this time around,” as CNN put it. She’s also known as a Queen of Mean behind the scenes, treating people poorly in private. While it was subtle, I believe this personality defect was apparent last night; she seemed when attacked to be suppressing an inner rage.
Buttigieg is the most gifted orator of the bunch, smooth in speech and quick with a retort. Yet while his performance Wednesday evening was surely adequate stylistically, it’s unlikely to improve his fortunes in upcoming primary states. He’s generally polling poorly in them, largely owing to his unpopularity with black voters (many of whom dislike his homosexuality).
Biden didn’t hurt himself, as the waning ex-frontrunner so often does. But he probably didn’t do anything to reverse his slide in support, either.
As for Sanders, insofar as he has support, it’s a function of passion over personality. Style-wise he’s wholly unappealing. Many of his responses last night were delivered appearing red-faced and angry, and, in typical Marxist style, he’s devoid of humor and mirth. Add to this his quintessentially un-presidential appearance, and it’s hard to imagine him winning a general election.
Then there’s Bloomberg, whose issue is that he’s the Wizard of Oz’s man behind the curtain. His second-place finish in a recent poll was achieved totally via campaign ads, which are written and edited and polished and often light on China Mike himself. That’s the Wizard. Not only was it inevitable that Bloomberg would pale in comparison to these fictions, but he’s neither charming nor a particularly gifted debater. So we have to wonder if his emergence from behind the curtain means it’ll be curtains on his momentum.
Perhaps not, as pocketbook can to an extent trump personality, as CNN commentator Van Jones pointed out (video below, relevant portion begins at 9:15).
In reality, there were not only six losers on the Nevada stage last night, but a seventh: the country. We’re none the better for a debate in which candidates “natter on about their usual stuff — health care, global warming, amnesty for foreign nationals who’ve broken U.S. immigration law, whether billionaires should be legal, a whole host of irrelevant, stupid stuff you don’t hear people talking about in the grocery stores or on the barstools,” as commentator Monica Showalter puts it.
Just as bad, identity politics was on full display, with the six white contenders bringing everything back to “Hispanic” this and “black” that. Perhaps they’re worried about how President Trump is apparently making inroads with the black community.
Of course, all this, not to mention that none of the candidates would speak of our real problem — our moral crisis — because they’re blind to it and part of it. That’s the real threat, too: If America is a loser when these leftists merely discuss their vice-born policies, just imagine what will happen if they ever get to implement them.
Photo: AP Images
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
